Scientific Guide To Facebook

September 19, 2013

Photo: the next web

Operating a climbing gym or wall is not an easy job. But social media makes the task of connecting to members and potential climbers easier. But it’s not as simple as plugging in a post about the new routes your routesetters just created or if the yoga class is cancelled.

The website, Buffer had a look at what kind of updates work best for Facebook pages to increase interaction and found 7 interesting statistics that you’ll probably find useful if you’re trying to make your page more engaging.

1. Engagements on Thurs and Friday are 18% higher

Compared to other days in the week, Buddymedia’s study found that engagement rates for Facebook are 18% higher on Thursdays and Fridays. As they put it, “the less people want to be at work, the more they are on Facebook!”

Photo: bufferapp.com

The study also looked at different industries, including sports, retail, automotive and healthcare, to see which days worked best in each industry. Although they did vary, most of them sat around the end of the week, from Wednesday-Friday. Apparently no industry has users that are engaged on Mondays or Tuesdays!

Specific industries varied slightly in which days of the week garnered the most engagement, but most of them sit around the end of the week, from Wednesday to Friday.

Another study found that engagement was 32% higher on weekends, so the end of the week is definitely a good place to start.

Photo: bufferapp.com

When is the best time to tweet, best time to post to Facebook, best time to send emails or best time to publish blog posts?

The best time of day to post on Facebook is debatable, with stats ranging from 1pm to get the most shares, to 3pm to get more clicks, to the broader suggestion of anytime between 9am and 7pm. It seems that this generally points to early afternoon being a solid time to post, and anytime after dinner and before work being a long shot.

2. Photo posts get 39% more interaction

Not only do photo posts get more engagement than links, videos or text-based updates, they actually account for 93% of the most engaging posts on Facebook. According to Kissmetrics, photos get 53% more likes, 104% more comments and 84% more click-throughs on links than text-based posts. And as we’ve mentioned before, self-explanatory photos seem to perform best.

Photo: Bufferapp.com

Wishpond’s data says that overall, photo posts get 120% more engagement than the average post, and photo albums actually get 180% more engagement. This was a surprising one for me, but it seems that if you have multiple images to share, you’d be better of putting them into a Facebook album than publishing separate photo posts.

3. Shorter posts get 23% more interaction

Writing shorter posts isn’t just handy on Twitter. Keeping your posts below 250 characters can get you 60% more engagement than you might otherwise see. You can even get up to 66% more engagement if you cut it down to less than 80 characters.

Photo: bufferapp.com

Either way, the result seems to be that getting to the point quickly and concisely works best. Perhaps that’s why Facebook fans like photo posts so much?

4. Using emoticons increases comments by 33%

If you thought emoticons were only for teens, you might want to rethink that idea. According to this AMEX OPEN Forum infographic, emoticons can make a big difference to your engagement rates. No only do posts with emoticons get 33% more comments, they also get shared 33% more often. Even better: they get liked 57% more often than posts without emoticons.

Photo: bufferapp.com

Emoticons tend to add a more human side to your communications, and it seems like this comes across fairly well with users.

5. Question posts get 100% more comments

If comments are the kind of interaction you’re after, questions might be the way to go. According to an infographic by Kissmetrics, they get 100% more comments than standard text-based posts. HubSpot shares a similar finding, although this data points out that question posts often get fewer likes and shares than other types of posts.

Photo: bufferapp.com

What I found really interesting about this stat is that HubSpot’s data also shows which question words attract more comments, with the most popular being ‘should,’ ‘would,’ ‘which,’ and ‘who.’ This makes me think that closed questions which have a very limited answer option are the highest attractors of comments. Open question words like ‘why’ and ‘how’ which make the user think more to articulate their answer sit at the bottom of this chart.

Photo: bufferapp.com

6. 35% of Facebook Fans like a page so they can participate in contests

If you’re chasing down new fans, a contest seems like a fairly good way to encourage likes. A report from earlier this year showed that 35% of Facebook fans liked Facebook pages specifically to compete in contests. Contests obviously solicit interaction by asking for people to enter. It turns out this can work, as ‘caption this photo’-style contests actually bring in 5.5 times more comments than regular posts.

In Buddymedia’s report, contest-related words like winner, win, entry, contest, enter and promotion were all more likely to engage users.

7. 42% of Fans like a page to get a coupon or discount

According to Socially Stacked, 42% of Facebook fans like a page in order to get a discount or coupon. A study by Wildfire Interactive showed that coupon-based campaigns received the highest engagement rates. Giveaways and sweepstakes came in just behind coupons as highly engaging post types.